A LOUGHBOROUGH theatre company which was formed following a pub conversation are celebrating 20 years of staging shows in the town.

Greasepaint Productions has been entertaining audiences for two decades and has become one of the most popular and respected names on the scene.

To mark their 20th anniversary, they are going back to where it all began with a production of Melvyn Bragg and Howard Goodall’s masterpiece, The Hired Man at Loughborough Town Hall on October 15 to 19.

And for the man who has been at the helm of Greasepaint the whole journey, producer and director Shane Perry, reaching 20 years is a proud moment.

He said: “We started Greasepaint in a pub one Sunday night after myself and a group of fellow theatre friends, people like my brother Lyndon, Mark Chinnery and Gary Lowe had been ten-pin bowling.”

“We thought we’d like to do something of our own and they said to me I should run it and I said okay, and off we went. It is a source of great pride to see us where we are now, it’s incredible the commitment you get off everybody, the way the society has grown and evolved and changed.

“We’ve had some memorable shows too and we’ve broken new ground with ones like Parade and Ragtime, the sort of shows other groups don’t tackle.

“We did The Mystery of Edwin Drood too in our infancy where you have to ask the audience how they think it should end, very unusual but very much what Greasepaint has been about.

“And now we are returning to The Hired Man and I can’t think of a better way to mark our 20th anniversary because it is such a fantastic piece of theatre.”